I started using drugs and alcohol at ten years of age.  I always thought being a good kid was no fun.  At seventeen I got married and maintained my abuse for awhile by being a workaholic.  At nineteen I got promoted to foreman installing fire sprinklers.  This gave me money to drink and smoke more.  At twenty-five I started growing and selling weed and at twenty-seven I was promoted to superintendent over the field shop and engineering department.  I was a functioning alcoholic who had become very well off financially.  I had land, a home, cars, dirt bikes, four-wheelers and guns.  But something was missing because I was not happy.  I started using cocaine and then got hooked on crack.  By the age of thirty I had lost everything but my wife and kids.  Then I went to jail, then a six month Christian drug rehab, then finally prison.  Then I started working hard again and bought everything I had lost back, but I was still drinking and using drugs so of course I still was not happy.  Some friends asked me to go into business starting up a fire protection company.  It was what I had wanted to do since I was eighteen and I did well for awhile, but then I started drinking more until I could not control myself.  My wife left and my business partners started making me stay with them so I would not drink.  I disappeared one day and they found me two days later in a motel…I was broke and hated myself.  I went home with one of my partners and he took me to a Christian Mission.  The next day was my 22^nd wedding anniversary.  I called my wife and she did not want to talk to me, but did tell me that my partners were through with me and so was she.  That night in Church I accepted that my life as I had known it was over and I felt that I had once again lost everything including my family.  I surrendered my whole life to the Lord that night and was saved.  A sense of peace came over me right then and there.  I knew that regardless of what things looked like, everything was going to be alright.  I might have lost everything but I had gained Jesus.  I started praying and God started restoring my broken life.  My wife came back to me and my business partners decided not to buy me out, but most of all, the Lord filled the empty spot in my life that I could not fill.  My wife and I get along now better than ever.  We still have things to work on but with Christ in my life I know it will be better than ever.  Today I know I do not have to lie or pretend to be someone else, depending on who I am around.  I look forward to a good life serving the Lord Jesus Christ.  My goal is to let the Lord guide my life while hopefully helping others.  Today I look back on that bad kid and realize he did not have fun being bad.  I was blind not to see I needed Jesus at the head of my life in order to have that good life.  I thank God for sending His Son to save me.  I look forward to my growing relationship with Him and to the life it will bring me.  May God bless you all.

P.S.  We do Mel’s arsenal prayer daily.